The not-fit-for-parenting part of it, Don Juan could have said, but his mother had dramatically called for silence and something told him snark was inadvisable at a moment like this.

"She wasn't rejected," he protested. "She had a mother, up until two years ago." Really before Adriana had died, Don Juan had considered it none of his business what she did with the girl. Afterwards — well, yes, technically that would have been the time to step up if ever there was one. But it wasn't as though she was out on the street. She had someone taking care of her, and literally anyone would have been a better choice than him, that much was obvious — even to his mother.

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MJ made this <3

The sharp Galway wind howled against the stone of the Dempsey estate, rattling her window in its frame, but Christabel barely noticed. She was cocooned in the warmth of her room, curled up in an armchair by the fireplace, a book open in her lap as she scribbeled furiously. The Mystery of the Hollow Man was proving easy to write, but the distant hum of voices from below kept pulling at the edges of her focus.

Then, a sharper note—her mother’s voice, raised, cutting through the murmur of conversation. Christabel’s ears pricked.

Marking her place, she stood, smoothing out her skirts before moving to the door. No sense in missing the best part of Christmas—the family drama. She descended the stairs, careful to make as little noise as possible. The drawing room door was slightly ajar, and through it, she could hear the cut and thrust of argument.

Her mother's words sharp with raw anger as she blasted Don Juan. The closer she got the more she pieced together the details. Don Juan, it seemed, had fathered a child—and, in true Don Juan fashion, had promptly abandoned it. She rolled her eyes, before slipping into the room, realising she was one of the last Dempsey's to assemble.

“Good heavens, Don,” she said, taking up a perch near the fireplace as though she had merely wandered in by chance. “You might have mentioned we had a new niece or nephew to buy for. What a Christmas for an orphan!”

She clasped her hands before her, tilting her head slightly. “Though I suppose the mystery of its existence and new family might serve as gift enough.” Perhaps it was her writers brain, and she was certainly not the only one in the room - who was imagining a Dickensian orphanic experience for her niece, sheltering in door ways, making their way to england in rags to find her absent father. Chris couldn't help her eyes flicking to Ozi, the papers would almost certainly make a mountain out of the ministers family abandoning a child in another country - the bad press wrote itself.

  

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I am my mother's savage daughter, The one who runs barefoot cursing sharp stones

I am my mother's savage daughter, I will not cut my hair, I will not lower my voice
MJ made glory

Although none of the words had been directed at him, Oz felt the sharpness of his mother's words and couldn't help think how she might have reacted had she ever learned about Sophia's child. Rejected — fitting verb for the situation, he thought. And he could not have missed Don Juan's use of the past tense: she had a mother. He was beginning to feel quite conspicuous, though logically he knew no one was going to be thinking of him or even looking at him for the next few minutes — except then Christabel did. He flushed and glowered back at her, as if to say leave me out of this. He pointedly did not look in Thomasina's direction.

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MJ is the light of my life <3

Lowri’s eyebrows shot to her hairline at DJ’s response. T-two years ago? “Two years ago?” This poor girl had been motherless for two years? Oh, her heart was breaking. Either that or  her tolerance for her children’s antics had finally found the limit. There were so many things running through her head that Lowri had trouble parsing  through them until her eyes landed on the letter. “And why does it say here that you don’t want her?”

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At this, finally, Don Juan looked abashed. When he'd met Kaatjie earlier that week she'd accused him of this and he hadn't exactly corrected her. In fact, what he'd done instead was tell her half a dozen reasons she ought to despise him, forced her to tears, and sent her fleeing back to her uncle. He hadn't been proud of this course of events in the moment and he wasn't proud of it now, either. He had no intention of recounting it to his mother, with or without the audience of every other Dempsey in the room.

After a beat where he clearly did not know what to say, he admitted ruefully, "It wasn't an unreasonable conclusion to draw."

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MJ made this <3

She had intended to stir the pot further, to make Don Juan squirm under their mother’s ire, but then he spoke, and the words stopped even Christabel cold. The girl had been an orphan for two years. She might have dodged the Dempsey naming convention but it sounds like she had her own crosses to bear in the meantime.

Christabel blinked, her mouth opening slightly before closing again. For once, she had nothing witty to say, no cutting remark to deliver. She stared at Don Juan, feeling an unfamiliar sadness creeping in. He had simply abandoned her? A child with no one? She had never considered that Don Juan’s irresponsibility might extend to something so severe.

A quiet truth settled in her heart some time ago: she would likely never have children of her own. She was a widow, practically a spinster. Nieces and nephews were as close as she would ever get. And yet, here was a little girl, alone in the world, cast aside by her own father.

If he didn't want the job perhaps she should take her in as a ward.

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   Don Juan Dempsey

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I am my mother's savage daughter, The one who runs barefoot cursing sharp stones

I am my mother's savage daughter, I will not cut my hair, I will not lower my voice
MJ made glory

She was mollified somewhat at the revelation of her brother’s bigamy. That felt suitably melodramatic. Nor was she as much dismayed about his dereliction of his daughter as some people in the room seemed to be – she cast a glance at Thomasina, whom she hoped would feel similarly unmoved. But the resulting silence at that last admission was rather awkward.

Phyri supposed she had best break it before someone exploded. (She had bets on their mother.) “I think you did the right thing, DJ,” she said lightly, undecided whether this counted for taking pity on him or stabbing him lightly in the back again. “I don’t think anyone would much want you for a father. Maybe for their drug dealer,” she finished, under her breath.

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   Don Juan Dempsey

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a sublime set by Lady! <3

Eamon strode towards the sitting room of his estate near Galway, through a gloomy corridor with tapestries in dark and rich greens and solid wood all around him, a corridor he liked — from the room he heard voices. Eamon Dempsey preferred to interrupt his breakfast and second breakfast with a brisk walk through the sprawling grounds, to stretch his legs and have the wind blow away all the clutter out of his head that his family's chatter deposited there, for it could inhibit his writing. It did not much matter — as soon as he stepped into the room, new chatter would take its place. He had seven children and all of them were grown, which, against his expectations, did not make it less demanding to keep their affairs in order. "The wind outside is most—"

He halted in the door and looked around. His wife appeared unusually exasperated and she held a letter in her hands. Eamon followed the accusatory direction of her gaze towards his youngest son Don Juan Dempsey, the most worrisome of his boys. He had always been, and seemed determined not to grow out of it. He was past 30 this year and recently looked like something was wrong with him in a way Eamon could not put his finger on. "—invigorating," he finished his sentence.

He smiled brightly at his family, while his eyes catalogued each of their faces, and examined their expressions of shock, anger and vindictive amusement. He sat in his chair next to his wife, touching her shoulder while he walked past her. On the white tablecloth was the breakfast spread and he looked discerningly at plates of scones and biscuits and jams in an array of red shades in porcelain. "Merlin, I was gone for half an hour. I did not know you would proceed through the itinerary in my absence."

He spread butter on a scone, then pointed with his butter knife at Don Juan. "What has he done this time?"

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   Don Juan Dempsey

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"Who is a drug dealer?" Lottie asked catching Phyri's words from next to her, her attention drawn back to the conversation at hand (or so she thought, she hardly realized - okay didn't realize at all - that she had missed an entire serial chapter that could have been a work of fiction published in the papers). "I should like to interview them." She determined with a short nod of decisiveness. "For my next story, that is." She looked around the room blissfully as if this were a perfectly normal thing to say.

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   Don Juan Dempsey

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Perfect Lottie vibes courtsey of MJ <3

Don Juan had already been feeling rather exposed by his last admission, and the moments that followed did nothing to help. Porphyria had pronounced him a terrible candidate for a father (accurate, but need she have said it?) and Shalott was asking about drugs. His father had arrived and immediately jumped to the (correct but still distinctly unjust) conclusion that he had found himself in trouble. He was not typically especially circumspect about his habits. He didn't announce what he was doing with his time, but he assumed everyone knew. He had a reputation as a drunk, and anyone who had been high before would have spotted the signs of it on him and filled in the gaps. On a usual day, Porphyria's comment about his being better suited to the role of drug dealer than father would not have been shocking. He might even have leaned into it, grinning at her and making the occasional lurid joke as the conversation continued. But in light of recent events — namely that he had been having a hell of a time this December and wasn't keen to have anyone know about it, and everyone, now including his father, was looking at him — he wanted nothing more than to get himself out of this conversation.

"Well, look, since you've got such a rousing penpal relationship with her," he said with a gesture at the letter, "Do what you like. Don't let your lousy fuck-up son get in the way." Having said this, he ducked his head and made a beeline for the door, hoping to retreat to the safety of his room — and possibly to see what intoxicants he had squirreled away in there, to ensure he was well and truly beyond reach of his family for the rest of the day.

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MJ made this <3